Tag Archives: Topic: Environmentalism

C-FAM Friday Fax: or decades, a basic tenet of the international population-control lobby has been that declining fertility rates will generate a more stable international order. But according to an impressive panel of scholars who have contributed to a new book, this scenario of “geriatric peace” is untenably optimistic. Population Decline and the Remaking of Great Power Politics is a collection of nine research essays . . .

The Hill: But they face vehement opposition from Republicans and industry groups, who argue the rules will harm the economy, force the closure of coal-fired power plants and threaten the reliability of the country’s power grid.

Washington Times: The bill doesn’t actually amend the 2007 law, but does prohibit the administration from spending any money to carry out the light bulb standards — which amounts to at least a temporary reprieve . . . The GOP tried but failed to attach restrictions on the Obama administration’s nuclear waste policy, its international family planning policy and major restrictions on the president’s environmental agenda.

NCPA Policy Digest: Electric bills have skyrocketed in the last five years, a sharp reversal from a quarter-century when Americans enjoyed stable power bills even as they used more electricity, says USA Today.

Washington Times: Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter said the Republican governors of the Midwestern states who back the stalled Keystone XL oil pipeline should bypass the federal government altogether and make the agreements necessary to get the $7 billion project up and running.

Alex Jones’ Infowars: Bureaucrats at the UN Climate Summit in Durban have outlined plans for the most draconian, harebrained and madcap climate change treaty ever produced, under which the west would be mandated to respect “the rights of Mother Earth” by paying a “climate debt” which would act as a slush fund for bankrolling an all-powerful world government.

Daniel Henninger at WSJ.com: The decision by the Obama administration to “delay” building the Keystone XL pipeline is a watershed moment in American politics. The implication of a policy choice rarely gets more stark than this. Put simply: Why should any blue-collar worker who isn’t hooked for life to a public budget vote for Barack Obama next year?

NYTimes.com: The Obama administration is preparing to delay a decision on the contested Keystone XL pipeline while it studies an alternate route, effectively pushing any action past the 2012 election, officials and lobbyists who have been briefed on the matter said on Thursday. An announcement is expected as early as Thursday afternoon.

NYTimes.com: Towering over the Bohai Sea shoreline on this city’s outskirts, the Beijiang Power and Desalination Plant is a 26-billion-renminbi technical marvel: an ultrahigh-temperature, coal-fired generator with state-of-the-art pollution controls, mated to advanced Israeli equipment that uses its leftover heat to distill seawater into fresh water.

The Washington Post: It is a deficit of trust,” Ban told the group’s 125th assembly, held in the Swiss capital and attended by Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey. “People are losing trust in governments and institutions to do the right things.”

TriplePundit.com: Europe’s highest court released an opinion on October 6th, finding that the proposed mandatory inclusion of non-European based airlines in the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), is compatible with international law.

The Hill: A newly leaked World Bank report calls on 24 OECD countries to boost tax burdens on their oil and gas sectors—eventually by as much as $40-$60 billion annually—in order to funnel part of the money raised to carbon-trading and other environmental concerns.

The Washington Post: President Barack Obama said Monday he does not regret a $528 million loan to a solar energy company that later collapsed, saying officials always knew a clean energy loan program would not back winners 100 percent of the time.

The Daily Caller: A Daily Caller investigation has found that in addition to the failed company Solyndra, at least four other solar panel manufacturing companies receiving in excess of $500 million in loan guarantees from the Obama administration employ executives or board members who have donated large sums of money to Democratic campaigns

Darren Samuelsohn at Politico: Solyndra executives repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment this morning as House lawmakers pressed them to answer questions about the company’s financial collapse and any hopes of repaying their $535 million federal loan guarantee.

Times Of India: The European Union, Japan and the United States are already providing $30 billion a year to help poorer nations combat global warming and this Green Climate Fund will be channeling $100 billion a year by 2020.

William Carroll at Public Discourse: On the basis of hasty scientific judgment, the Inquisition insisted that the Bible be interpreted in a way that confirmed this conclusion. The Inquisition did not subordinate science to the Bible; rather, it subordinated the interpretation of the Bible to a scientific view that eventually would be shown false . . . Views about science and religion, for example, which see them as fundamentally incompatible, appear to be almost self-evidently true so that anyone who challenges this truth is summarily dismissed. Such smug dismissal of what is seen as obviously false is reminiscent of the Inquisition’s insistence that Galileo affirm that the earth does not move. | Related: ADF-allied attorney rebukes Colorado professor, a high priest of Darwin, with Galileo primer

NCPA Policy Digest: One of the broad challenges to the new health insurance mandate is rebuffed by Fourth Circuit, finding it a premature attempt to block a federal tax provision. Federal courts have no jurisdiction to hear such a challenge, the 2-1 ruling said.

The Hill: The decision follows immense pressure from industry groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbied hard against the EPA decision to tighten Bush-era ozone standards.

The Washington Post: While apparent front-runner Mitt Romney believes the world is getting warmer and that humans are contributing to that pattern, Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Wednesday called that “a scientific theory that has not been proven.”

Boston.com: He said some want billions or trillions of taxpayer dollars spent to address the issue, but he added: “I don’t think from my perspective that I want to be engaged in spending that much money on still a scientific theory that has not been proven and from my perspective is more and more being put into question.”

Heritage Foundation Morning Bell: Americans are paying more for gasoline today than they were six weeks ago when President Obama released 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. In the Gulf of Mexico, meanwhile, 10 drilling rigs — more than one-third of the fleet — have left on Obama’s watch.

ADF attorney Michael J. Norton at the American Thinker: So, apparently, the groups that are cajoling the Beckhams would be praising them if they’d only availed themselves of “family planning” and killed their child in the womb. That’s how twisted things get when people exchange worshiping the Creator with worshiping the creation instead

Guardian.co.uk: This massively increased demand from biofuel is largely determined by the very large subsidies provided in many western countries, which have, ironically, been increasing their subsidisation of biofuel at the same time that they have reduced subsidies on food cultivation. Aside from a few producers, such as Brazil and Cuba, biofuel production in most locations would be completely unviable without these large subsidies.

NCPA Policy Digest: When viewed in terms of additional total energy output by source, measured in the common unit of million tons of oil equivalent (MTOE), we see that energy from nonhydro renewable sources (mainly wind and solar) grew by only 11.4 MTOE from 2000 to 2010, while new energy supply from coal grew 976.4 MTOE.
That’s 85 times as much new energy that came from coal than from nonhydro renewables.

NCPA Policy Digest: Consumers could see their electricity bills jump an estimated 40 to 60 percent in the next few years. The reason: Pending environmental regulations will make coal-fired generating plants, which produce about half the nation’s electricity, more expensive to operate. Many are expected to be shuttered, says the Chicago Tribune.

Thomas Friedman at the NYTimes: You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?

The Detroit News: General Motors Co. CEO Dan Akerson wants the federal gas tax boosted as much as $1 a gallon to nudge consumers toward more fuel-efficient cars, and he’s confident the government will soon shed its remaining 26 percent stake in the once-bankrupt automaker.

WSJ.com (via Google): Perhaps you’ve heard politicians call for “independence” from foreign oil, however unrealistic the goal. What you probably haven’t heard about is the determined environmental campaign, abetted by the Obama Administration, to shut down the 38-year-old Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

NCPA Policy Digest: Last month, California’s new governor Jerry Brown signed his first major piece of legislation: a bill that requires the state’s utilities to get 33 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Before signing the bill, Brown claimed that the measure “is about California leading the country.” But the governor’s political rhetoric ignores the higher costs that the mandate will place on California’s residents and entrepreneurs, says Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Heritage Foundation, The Foundry: Randall Stilley has witnessed firsthand the Obama administration’s job-killing agenda. As the president and chief executive of Seahawk Drilling, he had to lay off 632 employees before filing for bankruptcy — a direct result of President Barack Obama’s anti-energy policies.

AP: A group of attorneys using children and young adults as plaintiffs plans to file legal actions in every state and the District of Columbia on Wednesday in an effort to force government intervention on climate change.

NCPA Policy Digest: Due to declining production at existing wells and bureaucratic delays on new wells in the Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blowout in 2010, the federal government is forfeiting revenues of more than $4.7 million per day.

Ken Klukowski at the Washington Examiner: It appeared yesterday during oral arguments in a case raising important constitutional and political issues that members of the U.S. Supreme Court doubt the wisdom of allowing federal judges the power to regulate carbon emissions. The case was AEP v. Connecticut in which eight states sued American Electric Power and other electricity providers over carbon emissions . . .

NCPA Policy Digest: Texas is now the nation’s leading industrial and manufacturing state. Thus, the state will be disproportionately impacted by the recent Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) greenhouse gas (GHG) regulation and the many other major rules to take effect in the next three years. Indeed, the rules on track to go into effect in the next three years could cost more than $1 trillion, result in hundreds of thousands of jobs lost and significantly impair electric reliability, says Kathleen Hertnett White, director of the Armstrong Center for Energy and Environment . . .

Wall Street Journal: In 1996, top-loaders were pretty much the only type of washer around, and they were uniformly high quality. When Consumer Reports tested 18 models, 13 were “excellent” and five were “very good.” By 2007, though, not one was excellent and seven out of 21 were “fair” or “poor.” This month came the death knell: Consumer Reports simply dismissed all conventional top-loaders as “often mediocre or worse.” How’s that for progress? The culprit is the federal government’s obsession with energy efficiency.

The Hill: That’s the message Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) sent to the Obama administration on Monday when the Interior Department announced it had approved the first Gulf of Mexico deepwater drilling permit since last year’s massive oil spill.”

The Hill: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on Thursday called boosting Alaskan oil production her top priority and claimed that Middle Eastern turmoil and rising prices put drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) “back on the table.”

Michelle Malkin writes at Townhall: The second deepwater drilling ban (which oil spill czar Michael Bromwich admitted was “roughly congruent with the original moratorium”) was “lifted” in October, but still no permits were issued. This is because Team Obama’s eco-radicals never intend to approve them.

CNS: “The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is teaching farmers how to participate in ‘carbon markets’ despite the fact that such markets do not exist and Congress – in rejecting cap and trade legislation last year – has refused to create them.”

Wall Street Journal: “More than two months after the Obama administration lifted its ban on drilling in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico, oil companies are still waiting for approval to drill the first new oil well there. Experts now expect the wait to continue until the second half of 2011, and perhaps into 2012.”

Washington Times: “A long-standing tit-for-tat between Texas and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over how to regulate pollution has grown fierce in recent months, leaving industry frustrated and allowing some plants and refineries to spew more toxic waste into the air, streams and lakes than what is federally acceptable.”

Fox News: “After failing to get climate-change legislation through Congress, the Obama administration plans on pushing through its environmental policies through other means, and Republicans are ready to put up a fight.”

AP: “Some businesses that would fall under the new rules say the system could dampen California’s already flagging economy, complicate lawmakers’ efforts to close a $28.1 billion revenue shortfall and lead to an increase in the price of electricity.”

Tampa Bay Online (AP): “California air quality regulators began hearing testimony Thursday as they considered adopting the nation’s most sweeping greenhouse gas regulations involving financial incentives for power plants and other major polluters to cut emissions.”

Townhall: “The EPA can only regulate interstate commerce, Howell explains. If coal is produced in West Virginia and burned in West Virginia, it shouldn’t be under the EPA’s jurisdiction. This doesn’t mean that environmental standards won’t be adhered to. It simply means that state agencies can streamline and prioritize enforcement instead of it being handled by a centralized bureaucracy.”

Investor’s Business Daily: “The global warming prophets and propagandists, who enjoy living in style on other people’s money, gathered last month in the plush resort of Cancun, Mexico, where January temperatures usually hover around 80 degrees. God must have a sense of humor because Cancun was hit by its coldest temperature in a hundred years.”

LifeSiteNews: “Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, called on world leaders Sunday to address the global warming crisis by drastically reducing the number of people on the planet. Maintaining that the very future of humanity was at stake, Turner urged immediate action: ‘If we’re going to be here [as a species] 5,000 years from now, we’re not going to do it with seven billion people,’ said Turner, who went on to propose the immediate adoption of a global one-child policy.”

Telegraph: “In a series of papers published by the Royal Society, physicists and chemists from some of world’s most respected scientific institutions, including Oxford University and the Met Office, agreed that current plans to tackle global warming are not enough . . . In one paper Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the only way to reduce global emissions enough, while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow, is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next twenty years.”

Bobby Jindal writing at Townhall: “The problem is that many Washington decision makers are either seriously misinformed or willfully ignorant about energy. Republicans seem instinctively to oppose cultivating energy sources favored by the environmental movement, such as solar and wind power. Likewise, Democrats often stridently oppose the expansion of traditional energy sources such as oil, coal, and nuclear power. Here’s an idea: how about we do it all? That’s not a Republican or Democrat solution. That’s an American solution.”

Mercator Net: “[T]here are tell-tale signs that a particular type of pollutant, the endocrine disruptor, is wreaking havoc on our ecosystems. And as the world’s rivers are in a crisis of ominous proportions, we are witnessing the alarming effects wrought by estrogenic substances on aquatic life. Feminized male fish that lay eggs and/or have lost their reproductive abilities have been found near waste water effluent areas . . . why are environmental crusaders hounding plastic manufacturers and the canned foods industry while ignoring the most obvious culprit: pharmaceuticals in our water supply? Not just what is dumped by manufacturers or consumers, but more importantly, what is flushed down the toilet after human consumption.”

George Gilder writing in the Wall Street Journal: “The massive vote against repeal of the California law—62% to 38%—supports an economy-crushing drive to suppress CO2 emissions from natural gas and everything else . . . Their economic model sees new wealth emerge from jobs dismantling the existing energy economy and replacing it with a medieval system of windmills and solar collectors. By this logic we could all get rich by razing the existing housing plant and replacing it with new-fangled tents.”

The Hill: “Environmentalists, GOP strategists and others are offering sharply different views about whether votes for cap-and-trade legislation played a big role in the demise of the Democrats’ House majority.”